We don’t have to celebrate Women’s History Month. No one forces us. Yet when we do, we may learn and be changed and become more involved. Our goal should be to listen and care. The National Women’s History Alliance designates…
Stranger in the Village: James Baldwin and inclusion
In the summer of 2019, I rode a bus high into the Swiss Alps, a terror ride straight out of Six Flags, to visit the most important site in American race relations that nobody knows about. In 1951, the author…
How can we say thanks? Reflections on the influence of Andrae Crouch
The music of Andraé Crouch was the soundtrack of my life as a teenager and college student in the 1970s. “My Tribute,” “Soon and Very Soon,” “Jesus Is the Answer” and many others were songs I often heard at First…
The SBC: ‘They are who we thought they were’
On October 16, 2006, the Chicago Bears came back to defeat the Arizona Cardinals 24-23. The game was considered the “comeback of the year” because the Bears were trailing by 20 points at halftime. What made the feat even greater…
Blowing the whistle on wedding fouls
“One last thing. If you ever have a choice between performing a wedding or performing funeral, take the funeral.” So said my pastor when I was 15 and announced my goal to follow in his footsteps. He wasn’t joking. At…
‘Grandmas make the best banana bread’
With the morning sun wrapping rays around the two windows in the bedroom, causing a pale light to creep steadily in from their edges, my oldest child rustles the bedsheets. It’s like she can feel the idea of warmth, the…
Troubling the water, a gospel for the ‘unmet’
These days, I can’t get this Gospel text out of my head: Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. In these lay many ill, blind, lame, and paralyzed people. One man was…
What has happened to suspended UMC Latina bishop?
March 8 marked a year since Bishop Minerva G. Carcaño, leader of the Sacramento, Calif., Area of the United Methodist Church, was suspended after complaints were brought against her. Her yearlong suspension is unprecedented in United Methodist history. Observers have…
When we can’t hear our children’s cries
I still can see the face of the distraught mother who came to me after I had preached at a church in Nebraska. She approached me tentatively; I noticed her, but as I was signing books. I thought maybe she…
How I realized I had been shaped by patriarchal views of pastors
When I read Victoria Robb Powers’ story describing the confusion she felt when she encountered a Baptist female senior pastor for the first time, I recalled two similarly disorienting experiences. One incident was completely understandable, in light of my Southern…
My home state is no longer safe for my family
My family and I are refugees in our own country. I’m just trying to be a good parent and love my kids, but the state that always has been my home no longer is a safe place for me and…
Saying the quiet part out loud
Isn’t it eye-opening when people say the quiet parts out loud? When they do, you learn what they really think. That was the case last month when a Republican lawmaker from Alaska attended a House Judiciary Committee meeting where representatives…